Border health training videos

We've all seen the dramatic impact infectious diseases can have on our community. With the rapid movement of people around the world, it is important we do all we can to keep infectious diseases from entering our country in the first place. The following series of videos outlines some of the key measures that need to be put in place to keep infectious diseases out and keep our country safe.

New Zealand abides by the International Health Regulations. This is an international agreement intended to prevent, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease. The IHR are mandatory and enforceable for member states. Under the IHR, New Zealand is obliged to ensure its points of entry meet the core capacity for public health. Health New Zealand is responsible for overseeing the compliance of our international ports and airports against the IHR.

Public health units undertake yearly assessments at the border, which the Ministry of Health reports to the World Health Organisation. A number of border agencies, including customs and MPI, also contribute to the implementation of IHR. In these videos, I'll cover a range of topics that contribute to a safe and healthy border environment. And as you'll see doing the simple Things right can make all the difference.

It's important we all get immunised against infectious diseases. Wash and dry hands regularly and well. Stay at home if you are sick. Cover coughs and sneezes. And to double check that you've been paying attention there'll be a quiz at the end of each video. So make sure you're listening closely.

Minimising the spread of infectious diseases in the workplace is important to helping keep our community safe. Some of the simplest yet most important ways we can do this is to wash and dry our hands thoroughly and wear masks and gloves correctly. We've all seen images of hospital workers going to elaborate lengths to correctly put on and take off their personal protective equipment, or PPE.

This video will not demonstrate how to do this. Instead, we're going to focus on how to do three simple things really well. One effective hand washing. Two. Wearing a mask. Appropriately. Three. Putting on and taking off gloves. The reality is that for most of us, doing these three things well will be enough to keep us and those around us safe.

It is a legal requirement under the Health and Safety and Employment Act to eliminate, isolate or minimise risk wearing protective equipment is a key way to protect ourselves and to protect others. There are two types of personal protective equipment; medical and safety. Medical PPE includes gloves and masks. Safety PPE includes things like steel cap boots, gumboots, hard hats, high vis clothing, eye and air protection, and gloves. This video focuses on medical PPE, which you must wear when there is an increased risk of infectious disease coming across the border. Please refer to your ports Health and Safety induction for more detail on safety PPE.

Hand hygiene is the single most important activity for preventing the spread of infectious diseases. I'm going to take you through the hand hygiene cycle so you can learn how to wash and dry your hands correctly. The hand hygiene cycle is made up of five steps; hand washing, hand drying, moving rings around or removing them completely, application of sanitisers, and keeping your hands moisturised.

The best way to wash your hands is to wet your hands with warm water first, then put soap on your hands, rub palm to palm, then spread the soap all over. Rub your hands together all over, back and front and between your fingers and thumbs for 12 to 20s. Rinse the soap off, then dry your hands well for 15 to 20s. Multi-Use towels are not recommended commercially for drying hands. If you use paper towels, use two sections and dry each section for 10s each, so dry for a total of 20s. When using an air towel, remember to rotate while rubbing hands together until hands are absolutely dry. This should take 10 to 45 seconds depending on the style of air towel. If using a combination of disposable paper towels and air towel, dry for at least 30s. A good way to remember how long to wash and dry your hands for is to sing the Happy Birthday song twice. By the time you're finished singing, you will be finished washing and drying your hands.

Gloves should be worn when there's a likelihood of touching body fluids, non-intact skin or mucous membranes. They must be worn when workers have non-intact skin. They must be changed between travellers and jobs, and hand hygiene must occur between removing and re-gloving. Surgical masks will in most instances provide adequate protection as they protect the wearer from infectious respiratory droplets produced when a person coughs or sneezes. N95/P2 respirators are typically not needed at the border. Surgical masks must be worn if you come within one metre of a sick passenger.

PPE must be put on in the correct order. The first thing to do is to put a mask on the sick passenger. Next, wash or sanitise your hands. Then put a mask on yourself. Gloves go on next. It is best to use a buddy system to ensure it has done correctly. It's just as important to remove medical PPE in the correct order. Take gloves off first, turning them inside out as you go and throw in the bin. Wash or sanitise hands. When removing the mask, make sure you only touch the ties and elastic, ease away slowly to prevent rebounding back into your face and place in the bin. Wash or sanitise your hands again.

So that's how we use the main forms of medical PPE at the border. Now take the PPE quiz to test your knowledge.

I talked about PPE or personal protective equipment in a previous video. Now I want to explain the risk assessments essential workers can use to determine when PPE is necessary. Lower or medium risk applies to people who stay one metre or more away from someone who may be contagious. This can include most customs and NPI staff. Of course, they need to use hand hygiene, physical distancing, cough and sneeze etiquette and adequate ventilation.

People who, due to the nature of their jobs, may be unable to maintain more than one metre distance from people, may maybe in the medium risk. This is people like border staff, carrying out baggage searches and police. They need to use everything the lower medium risk group use, but also surgical masks and gloves if direct contact is likely.

Medium to high risk are those that can't stay more than one metre away. The excludes most staff working in the airport environment. Those that are, are airport fire service who may be carrying out an assessment on a sick passenger. In addition to hand hygiene, physical distance, cough and sneeze etiquette, adequate ventilation, surgical masks and gloves. They also need a gown or apron.

The high risk group of people who carry out medical procedures they need to wear all PPE, including eye protection. Also note the Ministry of Health might publish specific requirements for PPE for situations such as Covid 19. There is a lot to take into account when assessing risk. So take the assessing risk quiz and see how you go.

I'm going to explain the importance of quarantine and isolation. Quarantine and isolation are two different things. If someone has a disease and is infectious, they will be put into isolation so they can't pass it on to others. Quarantine is when someone connected to the infectious person needs to stay at home. You can be put into quarantine even if you don't have any symptoms, you just need to have been exposed to the disease. Ultimately, they're both trying to achieve the same outcome, stopping the spread of disease by keeping people who are infectious or potentially infectious away from others. Staying at home prevents you from passing the disease on to other people. Some diseases can be very dangerous for people with immune problems. Young babies, people with cancer and older people are less able to fight off infections.

There are some diseases we can't vaccinate against, like dengue fever and malaria and some diseases are more infectious than others, like measles. The length of time you need to stay in isolation varies with different diseases. Your doctor or public health team will let you know how long it needs to be. If you're in isolation or quarantine, please stay inside unless you're seeking medical attention.

Here's a list of some do's and don'ts. Don't go to work, school, public areas or use public transport. Don't open the front door and talk to visitors. Don't invite visitors inside. Get courier parcels, food and groceries left on the doorstep and pick up when they've gone. The same applies to deliveries from friends and family. Stay in a different room to other people in your home as much as possible. Use a different bathroom if there's one available and avoid sharing drinking glasses, dishes, towels, and bedding. If you need to visit a doctor. Call ahead for advice on what they want you to do.

It's really important not to spread germs, so cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue or into your elbow. Wash your hands regularly with soap and water. Your doctor will tell you if you need to take other precautions like wearing a face mask.

Take care of yourself by taking the medication prescribed by your doctor. Drinking plenty of fluids, eating healthy food, and getting plenty of rest. If your symptoms get worse, call your doctor. Keep connected with family and friends by phone, email or social media. It's easier to cope with isolation and quarantine if you're prepared.

General and contingency planning is in place for quarantinable and communicable diseases at our border. Health protection measures at our borders include.

Travel measures of things like entry screening of travellers, including inspections onboard aircraft and vessels. Health declarations from travellers. Visual or temperature screening, rapid laboratory investigations, and screening of risk goods. Restrictions can be placed on travel to and from selected countries or areas, and borders can be closed. It's important that any measures taken against a public health threat are proportional to the level of risk and take into account the potential health, social, and economic impacts of the implementation.

So now you can see why quarantine and isolation is important. So take the quiz to test your knowledge.

In this video, I will explain one of the range of strategies available to prevent disease transmission. Physical distancing. In the past, the term social distancing has been used. Physical distancing is preferred, however, as even if you are in isolation or quarantine, you can still socially connect with people by giving them a call. What we're aiming to stop is getting too close physically, as this can make it easy for a virus to spread.

The easiest way to prevent illness is by staying outside a one metre radius around a person with an illness. If you need to go inside this then gloves and masks are recommended. There may be a time limit associated with this depending on the disease in question. Influenza spreads more rapidly and poorly ventilated internal spaces, so it's important to have adequate ventilation.

You can help prevent the spread of bugs by following good cough and sneeze etiquette. It's simple. All you have to do is cover a cough or sneeze with your elbow or tissue. If using a tissue, it should be disposed of immediately afterwards into a rubbish bin and then make sure you wash or sanitise your hands properly. If you cough into your hand, you must wash your hands immediately or you will contaminate other surfaces.

When bugs are circulating, minimise activities that have large numbers of people gathered together.

So that's physical distancing. Now take the quiz to test your knowledge.

Not only is your own hygiene important, but the environment around you is as well, and you may find yourself in a position of giving cleaning advice. The regular cleaning of the workplace environment minimises the spread of infection by reducing people's contact with contaminated surfaces.

Disinfectant can be prepared by mixing any supermarket brand bleach and water to a 0.1% solution. A new solution must be made daily. The ratio of bleach to water depends on the concentration of the bleach. Most supermarket brands are 2 to 5% hypochlorite. Use disposable cloths or paper towels. Some viruses can stay on surfaces for a long period of time. Influenza can survive for 24 to 48 hours on hard, non-porous surfaces such as steel and plastic, and for less than 8 to 12 hours on cloth, paper and tissues. Norovirus can survive on surfaces for up to two weeks.

Make sure you wear personal protective equipment, such as gloves and masks, when cleaning a surface that could have been contaminated by a sick person. Spray cleaner directly onto the cloth rather than on the surface to prevent surface contamination becoming airborne again. Workplace environments vary greatly, so it is important to consider your particular work environment and what is frequently used and touched by workers, customers and others.

Pay closest attention to areas likely to be contaminated and hand contact surfaces. At somewhere like an airport, it is important to clean high risk areas such as custom booths, search benches, rails, and toilets after each shift or plane load. Daily cleaning is fine under business as usual periods. However, during outbreaks and pandemics, high touch areas need to be cleaned several times a day.

The best way to remind people to use hand sanitiser is by making it easily accessible and always within sight. It's important to place hand sanitiser near and around high touch surfaces and communal areas, including entrances and exits, workstations and high traffic areas. Keeping the environment clean is essential to keeping people healthy and stopping the spread of disease. Take the Environmental Cleaning and Control quiz to test your knowledge.

Immunisations are a really important part of your health and well-being. They keep you well, they keep your family well, and they also keep your work colleagues and your community well. There are a number of vaccines that are available for viruses that we have in our community. The influenza vaccine is probably the most well known, but there are also vaccines for hepatitis and tetanus.

Make sure that your vaccines are up to date and in particular get your flu vaccine every year. We need to get a flu vaccine every year, because the flu strain that is circulating in the community can change every year. Vaccines are made to match the circulating strain each year. That's why you need it annually.

If you don't know your vaccination status, ask your GP team. They should have a record of the vaccinations that you've had. If they don't have a record, there are some tests that you can get to help identify whether you are immune to some viruses, for instance, hepatitis or measles.

It's the responsibility of employers to ensure that the workplace is safe and some employers offer vaccines to their staff. If you do get a vaccination from your workplace, make sure that you let your GP know so that they can put that onto your personal record. It's important for your workplace to have an ill staff policy, especially to prevent presenteeism. Presenteeism is when staff who are unwell still go to work, which makes it not good for them and also puts other staff members at risk. While nobody wants to let the side down, it's important that we play our part to keep our workplace safe.

If you're worried about your sick leave and you're not sure that you have enough, go and talk to your manager. Having your vaccinations up to date is an important thing to do to keep us all safe. Take the staff vaccinations quiz to test your knowledge.